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Submission + - Apoplexy, Prince of Persia Level Editor, Reaches 2.0

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Last year, Jordan Mechner, the creator of the Prince of Persia video game franchise, released the long-thought-lost original Apple II source code for Prince of Persia. Today marks the release of version 2.0 of apoplexy, the free and open-source level editor of Prince of Persia for DOS. Roughly 5.5 years after its initial release, support has been added for editing Prince of Persia 2 levels in both GNU/Linux and Windows. The game has its 25th anniversary next year, but the original trilogy only has a (very) small fan community. Will old games such as this also interest future generations or will they gradually lose their appeal because of technological advances?

Submission + - Tech Startup Publishes the Salary Of Every Employee including the CEO 2

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Paul Szoldra reports at Business Insider that Joel Gascoigne, CEO of social media startup Buffer, reveals his salary along with the salary of every single employee in the company, and includes the formula the company uses to get to each one. "One of the highest values we have at Buffer is transparency," says Gascoigne. "We do quite a number of things internally and externally in line with this value. Transparency breeds trust, and that’s one of the key reasons for us to place such a high importance on it." Gascoigne, who has a salary of $158,800, revealed the exact formula Buffer uses to get to each employe's number: Salary = job type X seniority X experience + location (+ $10K if salary choice). Gascoigne says his open salary system is part of Buffer's “Default to Transparency" and says Buffer is willing to update the formula as the company grows but hopes that its focus on work/life balance fosters employees that are in it for the long haul. “In Silicon Valley, there’s a culture of people jumping from one place to the next,” says Gascoigne. “That’s why we focus on culture. Doing it this way means we can grow just as fast—if not faster—than doing it the ‘normal’ cutthroat way. We’re putting oil into the engine to make sure everything can work smoothly so we can just shoot ahead and that’s what we’re starting to see.”

Submission + - Stretch or Splat? Physicists debate death by black hole (npr.org) 1

Submitted by gbrumfiel
gbrumfiel writes: For decades, researchers have thought they understood how black holes kill. Once you slip beyond the event horizon, the theory goes, gravity grows so strong that it spaghettifies you. But that version of events seems to violate Quantum Mechanics, which says that information must be conserved. NPR reports on the debate surrounding a new theory. The theory suggests that to conserve information, space itself must end at a black hole's edge. Anyone who falls "in" the black hole actually goes splat instead. Their information is carried away in quantum-entangled radiation from the edge of the hole. But is it really a hole if it doesn't have an inside? Discuss.

Submission + - Sculpture on the Moon! (slate.com)

Submitted by braindrainbahrain
braindrainbahrain writes: Slate magazine has written the story about the only work of art placed on the Moon , the Fallen Astronaut sculpture, placed on the Moon during the Apollo 15 mission to commemorate both American and Soviet deceased astronauts. The little statue, rather than bringing fame and fortune ended up being nearly forgotten and got both Apollo astronaut David Scott and Belgian sculptor Van Hoeydonck in hot water with the US government.

Submission + - U.S. can still beat China back to moon (usatoday.com)

Submitted by MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: The Chang'e-3 mission that landed a rover called Yutu on the Bay of Rainbows on the lunar surface proves China's space exploration program has one thing that America's does not — a clear direction. Its piloted space program has featured missions of increasing complexity, with the latest being two visits to the Tiangong-1 space module, a predecessor of a planned Chinese space station.

In the meantime America's space exploration is fraught with confusion, controversy and a conspicuous lack of funding and direction. Ever since President Obama cancelled President George W. Bush's Constellation program that would have returned Americans to the moon, NASA has been headed for an asteroid in the near term. Which asteroid and how Americans will get there are still open questions.

After China's successful series of robotic landings on the moon, many space experts agree the Chinese will probably execute a moon walk sometime in the 2020s. If and when that happens and if Americans are not on the moon to greet them, China becomes the world's space exploration leader and all that implies.

Submission + - The universe may be finite and bounded afterall. (johnhartnett.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The question is discussed whether the universe is finite or infinite, bounded or unbounded. In modern science it is presumed to unbounded and since the discovery of the accelerating universe, for which the Nobel Prize was awarded in 2011, that it is also infinite. However Hartnett has found that using the cosmology of Moshe Carmeli that the same equations that successfully fit the observational evidence in the cosmos can also be derived from a finite bounded universe. This means our location is space may indeed be special after all. The work was published in the International Journal of Theoretical Physics titled “A valid finite bounded expanding Carmelian universe without dark matter” (Int J Theor Phys (2013) 52:4360–4366).
User Journal

Journal Journal: Games of the year 2013 1

Journal by RogueyWon
And it's that time of year again...

I haven't actually played quite as many games this year; busy time at work and the financial constraints imposed by a brand new mortgage. I also don't yet own an XBOne (may pick one up in the new year) and while I do own a PS4, I haven't had it for long enough to do much with it, thanks to delivery delays. So my listings this year may be a little less comprehensive than they have been in the past.

Comment Re:Loophole closed (Score 1) 236

by hcs_$reboot (#45781329) Attached to: Italy Approves 'Google Tax' On Internet Companies

what google does is not fair game

What google does is not ethical game. Deontology in nowadays big companies is long gone. Basically, the big groups as of today are money machines - their performance assessment is basically the result of the equation Revenue - Charges. Fairness is not involved, Compliance with the law is, because lawsuits are the only thing companies are afraid of, nowadays, i.e. losing a lawsuit = inflate the "Charges" account. Google does what the law allows them to do - they own a large team full of people looking for ways to save money, legally.

Comment Re:Good luck keeping the genie in the bottle (Score 3, Insightful) 215

by hcs_$reboot (#45747055) Attached to: China Rejects 545,000 Tons of US Genetically Modified Corn

China holds all the cards

Not all the cards. China is - in some ways - like the uncontrolled and empowering Germany of the early XXth. They're the young new world superpower which doesn't have a superpower-history long enough to feel how dangerous it can be to lack diplomacy and look for trouble every other week. That obnoxious behavior is particularly strong and obvious since a couple of years ago - which is worrying. China is powerful thanks to its economic and commercial ties with most of the rest of the world. Unless there is an international comercial/economic consensus to return China to reason, China will keep growing until it is out of reach.

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